The present disclosure relates to computer graphics systems, and more particularly, to devices and methods of leveraging characteristics of an optical transfer component (e.g., lens or component for transforming optical light) in virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and/or mixed reality (MR) applications in order to identify and deprioritize (or omit) the rendering of pixels that contribute less than a contribution threshold to the final image's visual quality due to the distortion caused by the optical transfer component.
Use of computing devices is becoming more ubiquitous by the day. Computing devices range from standard desktop computers to wearable computing technology and beyond. One area of computing devices that has grown in recent years are virtual reality (VR) devices, which rely on a graphics processing unit (GPU) to render graphics from a computing device to a display device based on rendering instructions received from the computing device. In VR devices, the image to be produced on a display device can be oriented or modified based on user input, where the input may include detecting movement of the user's head (e.g., detected movement of the VR device mounted on the user's head).
In existing systems, due to distortion of the optical transfer component (e.g., barrel distortion and chromatic aberration), the VR applications are forced to render content to be displayed at a different resolution than the actual resolution of the display panel, which results in mismanagement of system resources. Particularly, in conventional systems, in order to maintain a minimum level of pixel density (e.g., density of rendered pixels contributing to a region of the display) and the field of view, an image must be rendered at a pixel width and/or height that is larger than the final physically displayed pixel width and height. This leads to waste of limited GPU and memory resources. The resource and time inefficiency may also lead to a less than desirable user experience.
Thus, there is a need in the art for improvements in rendering of images for presentation on a display device.